Selling beats online can be extremely frustrating, especially with all these complicated methods that all sound overwhelming. The key is actually to simplify your strategy by breaking it down to the basics and discovering what you do best in marketing.
- When it comes to online marketing, you must try your best to first identify your strengths. As a producer, you may not have enough time to master all the trades in marketing online which is why you must excel in what you know best. Some producers specialize in driving traffic to their site from SEO while generate leads from a blog. Many are great with social media while at the same time many don’t even use social media to market their beats. It’s all about finding what works best for you and putting 100% of your effort into it.
- Many online marketers will emphasize to you the importance of building your mailing list. That is because relationships are built through them. When artists buy hip hop beats it is usually because they have built a strong relationship with a producer through email. Also keep in mind that there are artists that don’t stay active on social media which is why you can always find them through their email.
- Don’t be cheap when it comes to investing in your website. Free hosting will only get you so far. I used to use free hosting in attempt to save a couple bucks but I ended up losing more than I thought. This is because when I started getting more traffic, it would cause my site to hit its cpu limit. Artists would then contact me saying that they tried to purchase beats but my website was down. Imagine how many sales you would lose if that happened to you because artists may also lose interest if they cannot access the site when they are in the mood to spend money.
- Keep up with technological changes. Since your business mostly thrives online, you must be conscious to any updates to the medium you use. If you are using SEO or Adwords, you must be aware of Google’s updates and how they crawl and rank websites. Whether you use Facebook itself or Facebook ads to promote your hip hop instrumentals, you must also keep in mind that they constantly update their newsfeed algorithms. Those updates greatly affect your strategy if you depend on the newsfeed to promote your beats.
- You need to have a business plan as well as a marketing plan. The difference between the two is that the business plan covers the entire business which includes overall strategy, finance, target markets, operations, products and services. A marketing plan focuses on the marketing strategy and marketing mix. If this was the Old West, you wouldn’t show up to a gun battle with no gun right?
These are some of the most crucial tips you will need to familiarize yourself with this year. These tips will withhold the test of time as they are all basic principles you need for your foundation. Quality, trends, and a business plan; everything else is all strategy.